4.5/5 ★ – echocaustics's review of Panorama Cotton.

Panorama Cotton is a Sega Genesis game that made my jaw drop. Although this 3D scrolling shooter is not really 3D and was made a year after Starfox had changed the industry with its revolutionary graphics, Panorama Cotton is still stunning to look at. I have always had a love of parallax effects in 8 and 16 bit games, and this game is the holy grail of parallaxing. The ability to communicate movements like flying up and down secret tunnels, diving in and out of a shimmering ocean, and smashing out of a tower to fly around it in a circle before smashing right back in is visually incredible. It's cinematic in a way I didn't expect for such an unknown game. The spectacle doesn't end there. While Starfox may have been more technologically advanced, the color choices and lack of environmental detail made it look dull at times. Cotton, however, has detailed and colorful spritework all over it. While being extremely short, it delivers a non-stop feast of nearly psychedelic visuals, beautiful backgrounds, and fantastical enemy designs. My only complaints are that it's perhaps too short for its current pricing, its lack of real replay value outside of an unlockable secret character, and its difficulty being reduced to almost nothing with the right movement patterns.